Adding Machine Question

[musicalmaster703]

Posted: 4/23/08 at 1:30am

Is this a revival?



The Adding Machine

* Print
* Save

Article Tools Sponsored By


Published: March 20, 1923

New York last night was treated to the best and fairest example of the newer expressionism in the theatre that it has yet experienced. The verdict, of course, depends upon the personal reaction on the sensibilities of the observer.

He will see and hear, this observer, in The Adding Machine, a Theatre Guild production at the Garrick-what starts out to be the short and simple annal of one of the great and glorious unsung of life; not too far above the submerged tenth, of a person, at times symbolical and at other times intensely personal, known simply as Mr. Zero.

For twenty-five years, day in and day out, excepting only national holidays and a week in the Summer, this Zero has added figures. Figures to right of him figures to left of him, volleyed and thundered from 9 to 5, six days a week, half Saturdays in July and August.

He married, this Zero, what must have been a sweet, moist-eyed, trusting bit of a girl, with infinite faith and pride in his tale of what lay just beyond this necessary beginning as a bookkeeper. But the days became weeks, the weeks became years, and the years decades-and still Zero is no further than his task of adding figures, and the little slip of a bride has become an ill-tempered, nagging, slovenly woman, bitter in her disillusionments and sharp with her tongue at him who is the cause of them.

Comes then, in the language of a great art, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Zero's career with the firm, of Zero still adding figures as he did a quarter of a century before. And at the close of the day's work his employer appears, notifies him that adding machines are to be installed, machines so simple that they can be operated by high school girls and informs him gently but firmly that his services are no longer required.

For one mad moment all the figures he has ever added whirl madly in the Zero brain-and when he is again aware of the world, he has stabbed his employer through the heart with a bill-file.

At his trial he becomes partly articulate-he tries to convey something of what the years of drudgery, endless, aimless drudgery, have done to him. He is sentenced to death and executed.

So far the larger part of his audience will go hand in hand with Mr. Rice, Mr. Moeller and Mr. Simonson, author, director and designer of last night's offering, and pronounce their work excellent. Mr. Rice, they will say, has written true dialogue, and Mr. Moeller has labored well to bring out the monotony and dullness and stupidity that are the life of the Zeros of the world, and Mr. Simonson, be his methods ever so unorthodox, has created what not even the most orthodox of all can fail to understand.

The part of the fable just outlined runs through two of the play's three acts and four of its seven scenes. One of these early scenes, in particular, displayed a novelty and power that will long keep it in the memory of the beholder. It is simple enough-Zero and a female Zero are reading and checking figures to each other, in a dreary and monotonous sing-song, and as they work they think aloud and show their inmost, sacred selves, but theatrical as the device sounds in cold print, it was weirdly effective and gripping on the stage.

At the beginning of the play's third act and fifth scene at least some part of the audiences will not feel able to carry through. For one thing, this fifth scene, whatever its author's intent may have been, is coldly and gratuitously vulgar.

Some day a doctor's thesis will probably be written on that inward motive that drives the young expressionists to scenes in graveyards. (The father of them all, of course, had such a scene in Fruhlings rwachen. Despite the lack, at present, of an explanation, the fact of the inevitability of such scenes will have to be accepted. Mr. Rice's graveyard last night served as the locale for a scene almost literally from Mr. Schnitzler's Reigen-with, it seemed, no reason for the enactment of the scene save that the author willed it so. Certainly there was nothing in the behavior or thoughts of any of the characters that brought it on.

Past the inevitable expressionistic graveyard, the action moves to a pleasant spot in the Elysian Fields. Here Zero is given ample opportunity to catch up with some of the repressions and suppressed desires of his former life, but he turns his back on them at the last moment for fear of being considered not thoroughly respectable. What this scene, and the next and last, are meant to convey is vague, perhaps purposely. Certainly they were not offered as things of beauty by themselves.

At this writing, with the final curtain not yet decently cold upon an expressionist heaven dominated by a gigantic adding machine, the last act remains curious, a vague blur, not, however, without excellent moments of satirical observation. It is, nevertheless, by far the weakest part of the play.

Expressionism, of course, is the modern definition for the method of production that covers all conceivable dramatic sins, and no one has a right to say to his brother what is and is not expressionism. To Messrs. Rice, Moeller and Simonson, obviously , it is the form of dramatic expression best conveying the illusion of reality in the presence of the obviously unreal.

The acting was excellent throughout. Helen Westley, without whom a Theatre Guild production is inconceivable, portrayed grandly the monster of a wife created by Zero and later destined to help push him to his earthly destruction. Dudley Digges as Zero lived the dumb, groping, plodding nature of the fellow. Margaret Wycherly played a female Zero with great restraint. Louis Calvert did nicely with an unobtrusive bit in the last scene.

Mr. Simonson's scenery is even more expressionistic than Mr. Rice's third act. In a courtroom scene, while Zero is tried, there is some excellent work by him. He shows us the Zero conception of justice, cold, inanimate, relentless, and the contrast between reality and unreality is heightened by the crooked bars and railings and walls. Mr. Simonson's, too, one suspects, is the effect of the whirling figures and the dashes of red that appear to Zero as his employer hands him his discharge for his faithful quarter century of labor.

Mr. Rice, it should be noted, is the author of On Trial, an equally revolutionary play, so far as technique is concerned, of a few seasons ago.

[son_of_a_gunn_25]

Posted: 4/23/08 at 1:33am

*Correction* It is an adaptation. http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=9220

The public generally didn't embrace Rice's plays. He was elitist. The only play that the general public liked was Dreamgirl which was actually highlighting the stupidity of public sentiment at the time. He hated musicals. When I heard one of his shows had been adapted into a musical I figured he was rolling in his grave. I haven't studied Rice in over a year so hopefully I am not remembering anything incorrectly. Someone please correct me if I am.

Updated On: 4/23/08 at 01:33 AM

[verynewyorkcurious]

Posted: 4/23/08 at 1:35am

It's based on a play, "The Adding Machine" by Elmer Rice. "Adding Machine" is a musical, so no it's not a revival.

[musicalmaster703]

Posted: 4/23/08 at 1:38am

oh thx